


Yours, Faithfully

by TheColorBlue



Category: ACCA13区監察課 | ACCA 13-ku Kansatsuka
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Emo Nino, Happy Ending, M/M, Nonsexual Relationships, Speculative Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-25 00:30:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9794408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: About what Nino confesses, and what he doesn't.Jean figures things out anyway.Note: "omake" added. I couldn't help myself.Also, this entire fic is very much an AU from the episode 8 backstory reveal and after.





	1. Chapter 1

Nino doesn’t think that Jean would appreciate this to the degree that he should, even if Nino did end up telling him, but Nino isn’t thirty, like Jean. Nino is forty-five and has been stalking Jean on-and-off since Jean was an infant. Nino was literally there at Jean’s birth, or at least in the same hospital building, and when Jean was still in diapers, Nino was changing those diapers while he posed as the kid that the Otus family had hired as a babysitter. Nino has been stalking Jean for thirty years and has been paid to do it, but it’s unfortunately gotten to the point in which Nino is pretty sure he’d happily do it for free. Not the, ah, necessarily stalking part, but certainly the security detail aspects of it, and the part where he takes all of these very artistically framed photographs because Nino may be a spy but he’s also an artist. In his spare time. 

He doesn’t feel guilty about the photographs, really. If Nino has had the uncanny trait of barely aging over the years, then Jean has the uncanny ability to always know when he’s being watched and from which direction that stare is coming from. So, if Jean really wanted Nino to stop photographing him, he’d have put a stop to it, undoubtedly. 

That’s what Nino tells himself, anyway, as he snaps another photograph of Jean, and tries not to think about how: in plain terms, he’s probably turned into a perverted old man whose primary joys in life have become: riding his motorcycle, eating desserts, and taking photographs of a man who is fifteen years his junior and who he’s been stalking for the last thirty years. 

-

The thing is.

_The thing is._

Nino had settled comfortably into feeling very smug and superior about his protectiveness of Jean. Jean is so naive and disinterested! He’s such an easy guy to upset or lead around by the nose. Jean is someone who needs protection and looking after, which Nino has been doing since Jean was an infant in diapers. What a great guy Nino has been, for doing his job so well. How clever Nino has been! How competent.

So. It’s disturbing to him, how shocked he is when Jean finally catches him. Nino is standing on the snow-covered hill, and Nino feels himself go cold all over, when Jean seems to catch his eye through the lens of the binoculars. Even, as impossible that would literally be, given the distance between them. Jean looks right at him, and Nino goes as cold all over as if the winter had crept in under his coat. Later, sitting in the snow, he takes out a flask and takes a long drink. 

He feels so cold all over.

He’s imagined that Jean’s sense of betrayal and probably hatred, which would be well-deserved, has turned into the cold and closed over his heart. 

Nino doesn’t want to talk to Jean.

He can’t. 

-

The thing is.

 _The thing is._

Nino is probably a little obsessed with Jean. Jean seems so naive and disinterested, but he has a mind like a steel trap, when he applies himself. Also, he has a heart that’s good and kind, and Nino isn’t used to that with other people. Not that he doesn’t know other good people, but Jean seems to be such a pastry box of unusual combinations. Jean is. _Jean is._

If Jean really had been staging the coup d’état, Nino has the uncomfortable feeling that he would have backed Jean’s seizure of the throne. Jean may have ended up complaining a lot about it, but he would have not only been a competent king, he would have been a great one. Someone who understood the running of a government’s departments and services on a fundamental level. Someone who was compassionate, but also just. 

But Jean doesn’t want to be king, and he isn’t actually staging a coup d’état, he is just being used as a de facto figurehead, and Nino is the sorry bastard who’s been stalking him and collecting a whole portfolio of the photographic evidence.

-

Jean tracks Nino down, even when Nino hides in the trees, like a coward, and he pretty much tells Nino that he doesn’t care about the stalking business. 

It’s enough of a shock to Nino’s system that he breaks down into laughter. 

He feels almost a little hysterical with it. 

Of course Jean wouldn’t care.

_Of course he wouldn’t._

Nino, who knew Jean so well. 

He should have known that. 

-

Still, it’s a strange relief later. 

When he finds that he’s tracking Jean from the sidelines, but he’s smiling. There’s a weird kind of relief, that Jean knows Nino is there. 

That he lets Nino be there. 

-

Jean is curled up on the sofa after drinking himself into misery over Mauve’s dressing down of him, and Nino sits there next to him with his arms crossed and thinks that Jean is wasting himself on Mauve. Mauve only cares for Jean in the practical sense of using him. Mauve could never appreciate the blonde idiot who does his job so well and is completely clueless about everything and is so forgiving about other human beings' foibles. 

Nino knocks back another drink. 

He thinks: he might be a little in love with Jean. 

Even though, it’s not like he wants to kiss Jean. 

But he thinks about Jean all the time, and happily collects his photograph like a stalker, and is always taking his dinners with him, and if Jean ever told him that he hated Nino, Nino might have been very well tempted to fling himself into a ditch and maybe die there. Nino’s forty-five. He’s not an infant, he was changing Jean’s diapers when Jean was an infant, but Nino thinks about how he might be a little in love with Jean, and how he would have lain there beside Jean, telling him to forget about Mauve, if only Jean would have let him. 

Perhaps, when all of this was over.

Perhaps—


	2. Chapter 2

After everything was over, after Lotta ascended to the throne and Jean was still puttering about in his job at the ACCA inspection agency—a position that he never did seem able to shake, and less so now, with Lotta as queen, and _someone_ had to continue to audit the departments so that the government could continue running smoothly into the new rule—

After everything was over, and Jean had an entire security detail assigned to him, lurking in the background—after everything was over, Nino finally decided to confess to Jean.

He decided to confess about his shady past of being surveillance on Jean for Jean’s entire life, and how Nino really was fifteen years Jean’s senior. 

Nino had taken Jean for lunch, despite Jean’s rather calm protests that Jean could happily afford to pay for all the rest of their lunches for the rest of the lives—Nino had taken Jean to lunch and sat him down and waited until Jean was fed and also halfway through his dessert before breaking all the news at once. 

Jean stirred his spoon around in his parfait, and then said, “Oh, well. All right.” 

Nino nearly wanted to kick Jean out of his chair.

“What do you mean, _all right_. I’ve just told you that I’m—I was already thirty when you and I met! I was a thirty-year old man pretending to be your high school friend!” 

“You’ve always acted pretty young for someone that much older than me,” Jean said calmly. “I don’t know if you’re as mature as you think, Nino. Besides, I don’t think you realize, you’ve started getting little crow’s feet around your eyes. Very small, but you’re not so very youthful looking as you think. Besides that, I was sort of expecting a different kind of confession from you today, but all right.” 

Nino put his face in his hands. 

“Jean, this is how Mauve got away with treating you so badly. How can you just let these things go like that.”

“It’s why I turned down the throne,” Jean said, and finished his parfait. “You’ve always been a strange guy, Nino, but I’ve never doubted your sincerity as a friend. Come on, let’s go. I want to smoke a cigarette.”

Nino made a little motion with one of his hands. 

“One day, I’ll find a way to bar you from cigarettes,” Nino said. “It wasn’t a priority before, but now I can’t let you die before me from damn _lung cancer_.”

“Another wonderful reason to let Lotta take over the monarchy instead of me,” Jean said, and pulled out his cigarette lighter. 

-

It wasn’t until later that Jean’s words registered. 

_A different kind of confession_.

-

Jean smoked his cigarette.

Nino blurted out, like an idiot, “It’s not like I’m in love with you.”

Jean looked over at him.

He took a slow drag from his cigarette. 

Then he said, “Why you’d say it then?”

Nino stared at the ground. 

His vision weirdly swimming. 

Then Nino found that Jean was looking up at him. That stupid, almost disinterested look on his face. Then Jean’s eyes opened a little. They were very blue. 

Jean said, “Ehh? You’re really about to cry.”

Nino smiled wide and straightened up. “Of course not. You need to learn how to read people better, Jean, you’ve always been like this. So naive.” 

Jean smoked his cigarette. His fingers caught around the thin white cylinder. 

He held the cigarette for a moment and then said, “You’re right. I’m very naive.” He looked away for a moment, then back at Nino, “Should I really just kiss you, then?”

Nino felt his smile go very tight, and then he said, “No.”

-

Jean followed Nino back to his motorcycle.

“Go home, Jean,” Nino said. “Go home, I’m very tired.”

“I know,” Jean said. “You’re an old man.”

“Shut up, Jean.”

Nino, fumbling for his keys. 

“Hey,” Jean said. 

Nino pulled out his keys and reached for the ignition.

“Hey,” Jean said again. “I know that you’ve always gone above and beyond for me. You’ve saved my life probably half a dozen times, maybe a dozen times and I never even knew about it.”

“It was my job,” Nino said thickly. 

“Maybe,” Jean allowed.

Then Jean said, “You’re right, I don’t want to kiss you.”

Nino felt the tears spilling out before he could stop them.

“But I never really wanted to kiss Mauve either,” Jean continued. “She was so—” and the blush high in Jean’s cheeks were real then, “so, beautiful. But I didn’t want to kiss her. I wouldn’t have known what to do with her. Just like I wouldn’t know what to do with you. But I know that she’s not around in my life anymore, but you’ll probably be around until the end with me, huh?”

When Nino didn’t answer, Jean said— “Hey, you’ll be with me until the end, Nino?”

Nino had clenched his teeth so that he wouldn’t cry.

Jean got up close to Nino, without touching him, but he looked into Nino’s eyes and said, “I always know when someone is watching me. I don’t want to feel like you’re not watching me anymore.”

At last, Nino said, “Jean, I’m very tired.”

And Jean said, “I know.” 

Jean said, for the first time that day, sounding truly sad, “I’m sorry I never noticed before,” and reached up to wipe Nino’s cheeks with his hand.


	3. Epilogue

Jean got on the motorcycle after Nino. Nino took them to his apartment. They sat in the kitchen and Nino made coffee and put out some of the strawberry bread he’d bought that morning. 

Nino sipped his coffee. 

The late afternoon sunlight was coming through the window beautifully. It emphasized how spare Nino’s apartment was.

Jean sipped his coffee and then said, “It’s not the same, with Lotta gone.”

Nino snorted. “Maybe you should move to the palace with her. I’m sure your security detail would love that.”

“My job’s here,” Jean said. “Besides, we’ve probably lived together long enough. She’s going to want a boyfriend eventually, and we can’t live in each other’s pockets forever.” 

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Nino said. He added, “I hear tell, that she’s planning to come visit you soon.”

“Huh?” Jean asked. “Oh. That’ll be nice.”

“She’s going to see the squalor that you’ve fallen into and make you move to the capitol after-all where you can have lunch with her all the time and she can make sure that you’ve been looking after yourself.” 

“She has a kingdom to look after now. She shouldn’t be looking after me. Hey, Nino,” Jean said. “What if we moved in together?” 

Nino started choking on his coffee. 

Jean patted him a couple of times on the back. When Nino had stopped coughing, Jean said, “This apartment looks like a lonely place to live. And I know you’ve kept following me around, even when I’m at work.”

“It’s my job to follow you around,” Nino mumbled. 

“Hmm. Even so, why don’t we make your job easier then?” 

-

Nino moved in with Jean. 

He took Lotta’s old room. 

He redecorated with photographs. 

Brought in his own furniture.

Nino woke up the first morning before Jean, like he always did, and then rolled over, to look at the wall that separated the two of them. 

He pressed his hand against his mouth, to hide the small, soft smile he could feel forming on it. 

He got up, to make coffee, and to put bread in the toaster.

It was a foolish thought, but, even so:

The thought that if this could be his mornings, forever, Nino would die a happy man. 

It was the weekend, so Jean rolled out of bed in his pajamas to the smell of toast and coffee. He sat down with his hair like a haystack, and took one of the toast slices that Nino offered. He spread it over with a thick layer of strawberry jam. He ate it all with large bites.

Later, after Jean had gotten dressed, Jean found Nino sitting on the couch, sprawled out and watching the television. The morning news was on. Lotta was being filmed at the capital. She looked beautiful. She waved at the camera with a big smile. 

The news switched over to a commercial for the biggest, most popular new bakery that Her Highness Lotta had helped to open near the palace. Maggie was the spokesperson. He seemed very intense about complimenting the excellent selection of bread and toast available. 

Nino looked away from the tv, over at where Jean had gotten on the coach too, all crouched up in that funny, childish way he could sometimes. Jean looked back at Nino.

“Maybe I really should kiss you,” Jean said. 

Nino didn’t move. 

Then he sat up, so that Jean could move closer, without climbing over Nino’s legs. 

They moved towards each other and kissed. 

It was very brief, and chaste. 

But it put a funny feeling all through Nino, anyway. And Jean looked red like he’d drunk a couple of glasses of wine. 

Jean leant back against the coach and put his cheek against his hand. 

They watched television.

“I can probably die happy now,” Nino said.

“Oh,” Jean said. His words half-muffled by his hand. “That’s good. I don’t know if you were happy before.” 

“I was,” Nino said. Then, “I wasn’t.”

They watched a commercial for cereal.

Nino was very happy.


	4. Omake

They'd been living together for two weeks.

Nino was very surprised one night when, whilst lying in bed contemplating the wall between himself and Jean, there was a knock on his door.

He opened his door, and then asked Jean, “Is something wrong?”

Jean sort of scratched his head, and then said, “Why do you keep watching me, I’m only in the next bedroom over.”

“Oh,” Nino said.

He looked at the ground, suddenly.

Feeling weirdly ashamed.

“Oh. I’m sorry. I’ll just. I’ll turn over. You’re right, I’m getting too over-the-top—”

“I’m sorry that I can’t give you more of what you want,” Jean said, quietly. “Actually, I’m not completely sure of everything that you want.”

Nino felt at a loss.

He said, “You’ve given me everything that I’ve wanted. More than everything.”

“Well that’s an exaggeration,” Jean said simply. “Even I can tell that you never ask for a fraction of the things that you want.”

Then, before Nino could stop Jean, Jean had stopped forward into Nino’s space, put his arms around him, and then tucked his head against Nino’s chin.

It was a little awkward.

Jean had accidentally elbowed Nino, and also hit Nino’s chin with his head, before getting into a somewhat comfortable position.

“Am I doing this right?” Jean mumbled against Nino.

Jean had never hugged Nino before. The only person he’d ever hugged was Lotta.

Nino put his arms around Jean and hugged back hard.

“This is perfect,” Nino whispered back.

He’d take a bullet for Jean.

Every day and every day.

Jean got into bed with Nino after that.

Not exactly in each other’s arms.

Jean lay curled up on his side, the way he liked it so that he’d be comfortable to fall asleep.

Nino watched the rise and fall of Jean’s shoulders as he breathed.

Slow, calm breaths.

Nino watched the rise and fall, until he too fell away into sleep.

Dreamless.

Filled, in that moment, with a kind of peace.


End file.
